Applying Social Network Theory to Vaping in High School: Implications for Person-Centered Intervention

Peer influence on risky behavior is particularly potent in adolescence and varies by gender. Smoking prevention programs focused on peer-group leaders have shown great promise, and a social influence model has proven effective in understanding adult smoking networks but has not been applied to adolescent vaping until 2023. This work aims to apply a social influence model to analyze vaping by gender in a high school network.

A high school's student body was emailed an online survey asking for gender, age, grade level, vape status, and the names of three friends. Custom Java and MATLAB scripts were written to create a directed graph, compute centrality measures, and perform Fisher's exact tests to compare centrality measures by demographic variables and vape status.

Of 192 students in the school, 102 students responded. Students who vape were in closer-knit friend groups than students who do not vape (p < .05). Compared to males who vape, females who vape had more social ties to other students who vape, exhibiting greater homophily (p < .01). Compared to females who do not vape, females who vape were in closer-knit friend groups (p < .05) and had more ties to other students who vape (p < .01).

Differences in vaping by social connectedness and gender necessitate school and state policies incorporating the social aspect of vaping in public health initiatives. Large-scale research should determine if trends can be generalized across student bodies, and more granular studies should investigate differences in motivations and social influence by demographic variables to individualize cessation strategies.